


And the Cosmos Beyond

by pickledragon



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Bisexual Joan Bright, Canon Compliant, Coming Out, Coming of Age, F/F, F/M, Gen, Happy Ending, Multi, but other than that basically, did my best to remember all of joan & mark's childhood, not am archives compliant, the relationships are pretty minor, we love one (1) woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 09:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20833193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickledragon/pseuds/pickledragon
Summary: Joan is twelve when she realizes, for the first time, that she may not be normal.But for her money, what normal actually means is entirely objective. It certainly doesn’t mean her family, with Mark floating through floors and setting bookshelves on fire, and her parents’ cold shoulders. It can’t mean Joan, with her passion for research and the scientific process. Normal has to be something she’s never seen, unique and whole and probably perfect.A Bisexual!Joan Bright story.





	And the Cosmos Beyond

**Author's Note:**

> I recently made the rather complicated decision of coming out to my church and community and in honor of that extremely messy and hard clusterfuck, here is some bi joan for your soul and mine
> 
> Edit: Now updated with extra scene and better flow.

Joan is twelve when she realizes, for the first time, that she might not be normal.

But for her money, what normal actually means is entirely objective. It certainly doesn’t mean her family, with Mark floating through floors and setting bookshelves on fire, and her parents’ cold shoulders. It can’t mean Joan, with her passion for research and the scientific process. Normal has to be something she’s never seen, unique and whole and probably perfect.

She’s a bit of an oddity in her elementary school, too sharp and pointed to make friends but too opinionated and questioning to make the principal like her either. Joan gets teased a lot, for not joining in the class-wise discussions about romance, or for reading during recess. But she can’t really blame them. Sometimes, you can’t question what the world thinks of you, because it’s true.

Joan’s in science class again, arguing with Khalia (who stole her pencil sharpener when Joan beat her in the last unit test) about the probability that life could exist on mars. They’re the teacher-declared two brightest minds in the class, despite Joan’s record for getting into fights, so they clash at any given opportunity. They end the fight on a draw when the bell rings for recess, and they give each other dirty looks on the way out the door.

When Joan sees Khalia stalking towards her on the playground, she assumes she wants to continue their fight, so she readies her best facts about the Martian atmosphere being unhospitable and unsuitable for life. To her surprise, Khalia yanks her underneath the bleachers and presses a brief kiss to her lips.

“Just so you know,” she says, “if aliens came to earth, I’d tell them to leave you alone.”

While Joan stands frozen in shock, Khalia takes off running to the other side of the playground.

It throws her into a crisis. Sure, she’d seen the other kids in class try dating, and then promptly break up within the hour (usually accompanied with a lot of messy, weird looking kisses), but they were always paired boy and girl. She doesn’t know why, but the thought of it makes her feel ashamed. She’s content spending the rest of the day sneaking glances at Khalia while her back is turned, and before she moves the next year, they do it again, a furtive gesture that makes them both blush and smile entirely too much.

Joan is unpopular in middle school. She speaks up too much in class, doesn’t care enough about fashion, doesn’t go boy crazy with the rest of the grade and about a million other things. But Joan doesn’t care. She has Mark, and she has her small but odd group of friends and that’s enough.

In her friend group, there’s a girl named Abigail, who might as well be the complete opposite of Joan. She wants to be a professional artist and joined the cheer squad on a bet from her sibling. She’s tall and blonde, and makes the best insights about the nature of life when their lunch table get existential. And she has a boyfriend.

It doesn’t stop her and Joan from meeting up on Wednesday nights and chatting about the stars, spending far too much time looking into each other’s eyes instead.

They’re at home, doing homework in the kitchen because it has the best light in the entire house when their parents exchange a glance. Their mother looks up from her newspaper and their father folds his hands. 

“Joan. Mark.”

Joan snaps to attention and Mark does his best not to flinch. This kind of announcement usually only comes to critique Mark’s grades or Joan’s disciplinary records.

Her mother begins, with an edge to her tone that is rarely absent nowadays. “I take it you two have heard the news about your... _friend_, John.”

Joan hasn’t, but Mark slumps down in his seat. “What about him?” she asks.

“He’s no longer welcome in this house, due to his irresponsible behavior and casual disregard of decency.”

“You mean, kissing guys in the locker room.”

Joan shoots a look at Mark, who meets her eyes with a steely gaze. He’s apparently decided today is the perfect time to come out of his shell at home. He’s only three years younger than her, but he knows what it means to point out the obvious around their parents. She braces herself.

“We mean being ungrateful,” his father corrects. The air is icy. “You know very well that what John did was unacceptable.”

“Just,” their mother interrupts, “Make sure it doesn’t happen under our roof.” Her tone brokers no room for disagreement.

“I’ll make sure of it,” Mark mutters under his breath.

Later that night, the two of them meet up in Joan’s room and cluster under a blanket in her closet. As soon as they shut the door, Joan starts in on him. “Mark, you know that was a bad move. You can’t say that around them.”

“Don’t care. They were being dumb.” He crosses his arms in a huff, and barely avoids squishing the plush virus leaned against the corner. 

“You’re twelve, Mark,” Joan retorts. “You shouldn’t even be worrying about this stuff.”

“I’m old enough to know that living in this house can’t be normal! _I’m_ not even normal!”

“Mark, everyone fights with their parents, and you can shut doors by squinting at them.” 

“Joanie, you know what I mean. I’m weird, and you are too! Are we just gonna sit around and let them say that stuff about our friend? About us?”

Joan sighs. “I know it’s frustrating Mark. Just—be careful.”

“Fine.” He clicks on the light in the closet, revealing the anatomy of their makeshift fort. “I’m going to bed. Good night, Joanie.”

“Night Mark.”

Around this time, Joan discovers that Atypicals exist. It puts the entire world into a new perspective and clarifies quite a lot about her brother and his propensity for getting in entirely illogical mishaps. She’s also slowly coming to the conclusion that her parents are not going to change. They, on the other hand decide neither Mark’s ambitions or hers are satisfactory. It leaves little room for crises of sexuality.

In high school, Joan decides she’s going to stop teetering on the edge of disaster and fake being normal until she makes it happen. She changes her clothes, speaks up slightly less in class (she can’t bear to say nothing, the answers are so obvious to anyone with eyes), and tries to cut ties with anyone who makes it harder and harder to look Mark in the eye. The last one is rather unsuccessful, so Joan decides to bury herself in academia once again. 

She fades into the background until her junior year, where, with parental drama at an all time high, she decides to drop the act. Joan’s almost relieved then, that the next few crushes she has are on guys. Like she’s being validated, despite all her fears to the contrary. She asks out the cute guy in her chemistry class, and they have a summer fling that parts amicably, and then she gets detention a few times defending Mark. Not a bad last two years, for the valedictorian.

In college, hot on the trail of Atypical research and torn between coming home for Mark or staying out of the toxic environment of her home life as much as possible, Joan discovers the AM.

It’s like paradise: an entire organization dedicated to her passion, with slots for research, patient intake, and a staff helmed by the best and brightest in the industry. She’s starstruck, especially by a one Ellie Wadsworth. Ellie is a final year grad student completing a program to transfer directly into a leadership role after she graduates, and she draws Joan into an internship, and eventually, a part time position.

Joan graduates with her doctorate and goes straight from her part-time at the AM to a relatively high position there. She’s kept so busy with work and with research that she barely has time to think of anything else. Eventually, Ellie drags her out of the office for more than an hour at a time with promises of collaborating on research right into an office party. And that’s where she meets Owen Green.

Owen’s a stellar researcher with a heart of gold and altogether too much good sense to be working in the HR department. His opening line is a joke about jelly, and she immediately knows she likes him. When Ellie brings up the subject later though,, inquiring about her feelings, Joan finds she can’t provide a good answer. She likes him well enough, but acting on romance has never been her thing. She’s much better with people as potential data points than as friends.

In further review, that question may not have been completely innocent. Ellie gives her certain looks whenever they’re researching in the same room, and on one particularly memorable situation, Ellie walks in to Joan’s office before she’s about to head out.

She makes small talk about the weather as Joan packs up, and keeps close to Joan, who can feel her heart beating slightly faster whenever Ellie presses against her side. She asks if Joan needs a ride home, to which she shakes her head, thank you, but she has a car that Ellie walks past about every day in the parking lot.

A bit after she leaves, Joan turning the conversation over in her head, she realizes Ellie was trying to seduce her. It surprises her a little, that she liked it. She’d thought she’d grown out of that. But she doesn’t have a chance to consider it, because the very next day, Owen asks her out on their first date.

Dating Owen is… fantastic. It’s the first serious relationship Joan has had, (if you except the regretful flings with fellow lab assistants in college, which Joan does) and it feels… normal. Comfortable. There’s no doubt that she loves him. She wakes up next to him one morning and comes to the realization slowly, with no small amount of panic, that she loves the person sleeping next to her. 

It’s a startling feeling, but it’s a relief too, because now the small feelings and fears in the back of her mind about being abnormal don’t matter. (They still do.) Things with Ellie are back to normal (they aren’t), and she’s really thriving in the AM (she doesn’t know, anymore).

Things around the AM don’t add up, so Joan goes snooping in unauthorized areas. She finds Mark, and everything that comes after.

The next time Joan has time to catch a breath, she’s back at the AM once again. Ellie is gone, off to higher places like she always wanted, and Joan is alone again. Owen’s sweet, but he knows its over, and that’s driven an impenetrable wedge between them. They’ve become friends again, but they won’t be anything more. Not anymore.

The days at the AM are long and hard. She and Sam spend every day swamped in paperwork to manage the higher tiers and to work on rehab and eventual release. And eventually, Joan realizes the same thing she had with Owen: she loves Samantha. 

They don’t do the same things as she and Owen had, no nights spent together and candlelit dates, but Joan and Sam carve out their own traditions. They work on the opposite sides of the same office and call out random thoughts as they pop into their heads, leading to quite a few well-needed thought tangents during the long nights. Joan orders Sam’s favorite takeout right after Sam gets out of a long meeting that Joan knows she’d been dreading and Sam threatens to propose right then and there. They watch Cosmos together, and Sam introduces Joan to the ‘Watch Sam Nitpick Every Single Historical Film Ever Made’ Picture show, hosted Friday nights on Sam’s couch.

She texts Mark all about it in a frenzy one night, a moment of personal weakness, and he responds with all the love and support she was afraid she was going to get from him. He’s always been better at knowing her than herself.

She and Sam haven’t made it official, but it might as well be. Joan doesn’t know how to feel. Whenever she approaches that steadily narrowing divide between her and Sam, it still feels like a chasm, and physically impossible to admit that—

“Sam. I think I’m bisexual.” Joan throws the words out one night the office, quieter than they need to be. She says the phrase like a curse, like a small treasure thrown out in the waves of the ocean. Sam looks at her with curiosity, and Joan knows she probably guessed a long time ago, before Joan even, because she’d just been too scared to admit it to herself. But there was nothing to prove, not to her family, and not to anyone else. There’s only her, and how she feels, and Sam across the room, her face breaking into a smile like the sun.

“Oh, cool! Congrats!” Sam says, her voice bright. It’s like waves of respite crashing down. “I’m glad you found a word you’re comfortable with.”

“Yeah,” Joan responded, slumping lower in her chair in relief. “I am too.”

Eventually, Joan would tell her. Make a move, re-gather the courage to say that she loved Sam just as much as anything. But for now, she felt almost as if a weight had been physically removed. Label or no, Joan had come to terms with herself. And that was good enough for now.

**Author's Note:**

> learningthomas.tumblr.com


End file.
